We shall not always plant while others reap

The truth is... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else.

The key to all strange things is in thy heart..../ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.

Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching.

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind

If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone.